(Washington) A Salvadoran immigrant mistakenly deported by the Trump administration then brought back to the United States after months of legal guerrilla warfare was released Thursday by court order, his lawyer announced, a new episode in a saga that began nearly nine months ago.
Published at
“He has been released,” Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyer, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said in an email to AFP a few hours after a decision by a federal judge in Maryland, near Washington.
The case of this resident of Maryland, married to an American, crystallizes the opposition between federal justice and the Trump administration, accused of obstruction vis-à-vis the courts which thwart its policy of mass expulsions.
After declaring itself unable to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, deported to El Salvador on March 15 with more than 250 men, most for alleged membership in a Venezuelan gang, the Trump administration brought him back to the United States on June 6.
But she immediately revealed charges against her in Tennessee for aiding the illegal stay of migrants. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was finally released in August under strict conditions in Tennessee, including electronic monitoring measures, pending his trial in this case, scheduled for January 2026.
After his return to Maryland, he was again summoned and detained by the immigration police (ICE) with a view to his deportation to a third African country: successively Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana, then Liberia.
The person concerned refused these four destinations, declaring on the other hand that he was ready to leave for Costa Rica, which said it agreed to welcome him, which the government disputed.
“Violated court decisions”
In her decision on Thursday, Judge Paula Xinis concluded that “since his unlawful detention in El Salvador, Mr. Abrego Garcia has been detained again, again without legal justification”, noting that he is the subject of “no legal expulsion order”.
She therefore orders the government to release him “immediately” and to report to her by 5 p.m. local time (5 p.m. Eastern time), deploring in passing that he has repeatedly “flouted the court’s decisions.”
“This decision has no legal basis and we will continue to fight tooth and nail against this in court,” reacted on X the spokesperson for the Ministry of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, accusing the magistrate of “judicial activism”.
President Donald Trump has made the fight against illegal immigration a top priority, speaking of an “invasion” of the United States by “criminals from abroad” and communicating extensively on expulsions of immigrants.
But its program of mass expulsions was thwarted or slowed down by multiple court decisions, notably on the grounds that the people targeted should be able to assert their rights.
